KEITH DUGGANlooks back over the last four decades to find one constant about Gaelic football; the fact that it continues to change

THE EPIC nature of the All-Ireland football championship means that it is bound to spark rows and disagreements over the course of the season. Already, the old tropes have been resurrected, with the purgatorial opening to the Ulster championship provoking much hand wringing about the evils of the blanket defence and the possession game etc.

It is only a matter of time before the other complaints – the absence of classic high fielding, the dearth of big-boned full backs, and the disappearance of the “traditional” centre forward and the lack of bone-juddering challenges get their airing. If there is one guaranteed response to any All-Ireland football championship, it is that football ain’t what it used to be.

The 2010 All-Ireland football championship was generally lauded as a success for style and entertainment, with Cork delivering on their potential with an All-Ireland final victory that advertised their fundamental ability to kick points.

Additional features included the colourful return of Down to the big time, with an All-Ireland final run that was laced with their customary dash and vigour.

Dublin recovered from an unpromising start to capture the imagination in the capital and Kerry, after a stunning record of six consecutive All-Ireland appearances, were at last stopped in August.

The individual attacking displays by players like Bernard Brogan, Colm Cooper and John Doyle illuminated the Sundays in which they were on show and with a staggering level of fitness and conditioning now common among all teams, there was much to celebrate about the state of the game.

But the fears that the game is gradually moving away from everything that made it recognisable persist. The reliance of many managers on the blanket defence has vexed many observers, even though the current holders Cork required no such system in winning the title last year.

Bemoaning it is as pointless as giving out about the drift-defence system that rugby union coaches often employ, or complaining about the tradition in Italian football for protecting a single goal lead.

“The blanket defence is a tactic. Whatever is seen to be successful will be copied,” says Colm Clear, coaching officer with the Leinster council. “Years ago, bringing the corner forward out and leaving two inside became common.

“Then teams learned to cope with it and many of the best teams are reverting to three inside again. It will take someone to come up with a structured pattern to break the blanket defence down and it will disappear, to be replaced by something else.”

It is all of 13 years since Galway won its first All-Ireland football title in 32 years by embracing a game style that had the purists jumping for joy.

The game-plan of the 1998 maroon vintage was predicated on big, sweeping, clean attacks involving long-range passing and a willingness to shoot for points from distance. It helped of course that Galway had in its ranks one of the key midfielders of the last 20 years in Kevin Walsh and several of the best forwards to emerge in the modern game – Michael Donnellan, Ja Fallon and Pádraic Joyce.

John O’Mahony, the Mayo man who masterminded that win, said afterwards that it was a matter of tapping into an inherent confidence that Galway footballers had. But it is often overlooked that the opposing manager of the Kildare team beaten that afternoon was Mick O’Dwyer, godfather of the most celebrated football teams in GAA history.

Six years ago, in a December paper delivered in Croke Park on the perceived death of traditional Gaelic football, Martin Carney cast his mind back to the time that O’Dwyer was just beginning his managerial career.

“I look on 1975 as a pivotal year and the rule change that occurred then has altered the nature of our game more than we could ever have envisaged,” Carney told the audience. “This was, of course, the year that the hand pass was reinstated after a lapse of a few decades.

“The traditional game changed very quickly with its introduction. The traditional catch and kick was quickly replaced by a skill that while introduced, I believe, to speed up the game, in fact completely altered how the game was played and coached.

“Greater emphasis was now placed on retaining possession, more order and thought became commonplace in the game and gradually the sight of the high fielding full back, the spectacular midfielder and the burly forward became rarer.”

But as Carney went on to point out, that big change coincided with football’s most celebrated rivalry, the Dublin-Kerry period of dominance in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Rightly acclaimed though that period is, it cannot have been much fun for the generation of players who were locked out of All-Ireland finals by the supremacy of these two teams.

The Ulster breakthrough of the early 1990s, with Down storming to their first All-Ireland since the 1968 and Donegal and Derry then winning their first and so far only titles, ordained a more democratic period in the All-Ireland championship.

Since then, Armagh has won a first title and since 2003,

Tyrone have won three. The unprecedented success of Tyrone has made them the county to emulate for many coaches and the strategic emphasis that Mickey Harte’s team placed on defence is regarded as a blueprint for the blanket defence.

But Tyrone’s style has patently evolved once they learned how to win All-Irelands. While they will always abide by a collective intensity on defence, their ability to rapidly and smoothly transfer possession gained on defence into a sweeping attack has been provided them with their greatest sting.

Other counties can emulate the packed defensive system but knowing what to do with the football once they have regained it has not been so easy.

Tyrone’s success originates in no small part to the organisation and know-how of Harte’s coaching philosophy, but it would not have worked without the fact that the county has produced unusually gifted players – Peter Canavan, Brian McGuigan, Brian Dooher and Seán Cavanagh could adapt to any pattern of play on any team.

And for all the emphasis on defence, the All-Ireland finals of the past 10 years have been won by teams whose final tallies compare favourably with those of previous decades.

The exception was the all Ulster final between Armagh and Tyrone in 2003, a cagey and tactical affair which finished 0-12 to 0-9. But since then, the winning scores have been: 1-20, 1-16, 4-15, 3-13, 1-15. 0-16, 0-16. The team that wins it come September invariably knows how to put the ball over the bar.

Complaints that the art of kicking the ball is slowly but surely being eradicated from the game will continue.

Fear of giving the ball away; lack of time and space; lack of confidence and the relative ease of the hand pass have all caused the demise of the foot pass.

“As a skill, it has been neglected. There is no question,” Colm Clear agrees. “The emphasis placed on the kicking the ball is down to individual coaches. Again, once someone thinks out of the box and puts a big emphasis on kicking and has a degree of success the pattern will change.”

And perhaps that is the only certainty. Gaelic football, like all games, will change and continue to change.

The only certainty of this and every other summer is that each development and trend will lead to the conclusion that the game is not what it used to be.

1981-2011: The More Things Change . . .

FEW All-Ireland finals can match the mythology of the meeting between Kerry and Offaly in 1981. The Kingdom were chasing their fifth All-Ireland title in a row, Offaly hoping against hope to crash the party. But before the game, the topic of conversation revolved around an issue that sounds just as familiar 30 years on.

“We will have had 53 training sessions since the start of the championship before we go to Croke Park. We have had to concentrate on physical work – running, sprinting, exercises and so on to get us to the peak of fitness. Naturally with so much time spent on that aspect of training we have not been able to spend as much time as we would like on skills like catching, solo running, passing, ground kicking and so on.”

– Eugene McGee, Offaly manager

“Everybody wants to beat Kerry and that’s a good thing but it would be silly of us not to concentrate on reaching top fitness. Of course the skills of the game tend to be pushed into the background in that case. It would be nice to get back to the basics with skills coming first. It seems obvious now that a lot of people are switching to hurling because it is a more skilful game. Hurling has a much wider repertoire of skills and, naturally enough, the public prefers to watch a game which keeps moving and is not being spoiled all the time by stoppages.”

– Jimmy Deenihan, Kerry captain